


When the Sky Comes Falling Down for You

by stardustedship



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, emotional pwp, referenced suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21773014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedship/pseuds/stardustedship
Summary: Anna's told Elsa the bare bones of what happened while she was frozen, but Elsa has noticed that her sister, always prone to oversharing, is oddly reluctant to go into detail. Once she's asked Ahtohallan to show her what happened, she returns to the castle earlier than planned for a confrontation. But Anna's got a reckoning of her own brewing as Elsa demands answers. Set a couple of days post-reunion, before Anna is officially crowned as queen.
Relationships: Anna & Elsa (Disney)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 117





	When the Sky Comes Falling Down for You

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say? I see a spot for angst, I fill it.

Anna combed her fingers through her hair and swept it into a loose ponytail as she kicked her shoes off and eagerly changed into her simple nightgown. She loved taking off her formal queen’s clothes almost as much as wearing them, she thought. The same sense of fulfillment in two different directions. She arranged her discarded dress neatly on the nearby chair for her handmaiden to pick up later and then, barefoot and comfortable, turned her attention to the sunset outside her window.

Her heart tripped over itself when she saw there was someone on the terrace. It was Elsa, her sister’s outline immediately recognizable against the dying light. She was leaned forward on the banister and looking straight out over the water. She was not moving, and Anna had not been particularly quiet in changing.

Concerned, she padded to the glass doors – ajar, as they often were – and called, “Elsa?”

Her sister’s head turned just a fraction, but she remained where she was. Anna was growing more alarmed by the moment. She stepped outside and placed a hand on one of Elsa’s shoulders. It was tensed hard. “I didn’t expect you until Wednesday,” she said. “Is everything alright?”

Elsa inhaled sharply and rounded on Anna, dislodging her hand. Though her eyes were dry, it was clear that she had been crying recently – and more than that, her expression was a mask of fury and…hurt?

Her voice was husky. “What did you think you were doing, Anna?”

Anna blinked. “Getting ready for dinner?” She peered at her sister. "Elsa, what's wrong?"

“Not now,” Elsa said. “When I was gone. The earth giants.”

Anna felt comprehension and dread creeping up in her in tandem. “You looked,” she said.

“I wanted to see what happened,” said Elsa. “You tell me everything, but you wouldn’t say hardly anything except that you woke the giants to break the dam.” She exhaled and glanced away, softening momentarily. “I thought it was maybe modesty,” she said. “I asked Ahtohallan to show me because I wanted to share your triumph.”

Anna huffed a humorless laugh through her nose, then grew solemn again. “I told you the important part,” she said. Everything still felt slightly off-balance. “There was no point revisiting the rest.”

“No point?” Elsa’s voice was sharp with incredulity. “You ran out on the dam with a death wish and you thought there was _no point_ telling me you almost succeeded?”

“I didn’t have a death wish,” Anna protested.

Elsa glared at her. “Anna, I saw –”

“I didn’t,” Anna insisted. She looked away, and her hands drifted up to grasp her forearms for support. “I just didn’t especially have a life wish either,” she finished quietly.

Whatever Elsa had been about to say died in her throat; Anna could see her stunned expression out of the corner. She’d clearly been expecting her to say something different, and now she seemed to have had the wind knocked out of her by Anna’s words. “You…why?” she managed then: “What were you thinking?”

Her voice had picked up an edge of disappointment, and as Anna studied the raw anguish on her sister’s face, a familiar feeling started to make its way up from Anna’s chest into her throat. She felt her face heating and recognized the echoes of the helpless anger that had taken her over in the boat with Olaf. It wasn’t enough to overpower her now, but her voice was strained with the effort of keeping it level when she said, “If you saw what happened, then you already know.”

“I died –” Elsa began, pushing past Anna’s visible start – “and you were going to just give up? On the kingdom? On Kristoff?”

Anna’s voice was brittle. “The last time I saw you, you tricked me so you could get me out of your hair – again. And Olaf too,” she added.

“You would have died in the Dark Sea,” Elsa said sharply. “I was protecting you.”

“You don’t know that,” Anna shot back. “And if I had, I would have died _exactly where I wanted to be_.” Elsa’s eyes widened. Anna didn’t let up. “I knew what I was signing on for,” she said, unrelenting. “If I would have died in the Dark Sea, then so be it. That wasn’t your choice to make, and hugging me to get my guard down was _wrong_.” Her chest felt too small for the pressure welling up inside of it.

Elsa stood her ground. “If I had failed to protect you, there would have been nobody to save the forest and bring peace to everyone.”

“Don’t pretend you sent me away because you knew,” Anna snapped. “You took away my choice so you could protect yourself. Not me, not the kingdom, you.” She was breathing hard now, as though the fury that had run cold in Elsa had made its way to her and caught fire. “You died, and the last memory you left me with was hearing that I wasn’t important enough, or strong enough, or capable enough – I wasn’t _enough_ to be with you!”

Elsa had looked away at Anna’s accusation. Now her gaze snapped back to her sister. “I meant what I said,” she insisted. “I couldn’t lose you.”

“But you thought I’d be fine without you.” Elsa looked away furiously, and Anna knew she’d struck the heart of the matter. “You did, didn’t you?” she said. “You went out to the Dark Sea fully prepared to die for an answer. You _did_ die,” she corrected herself. “You died trying to be what everyone else needed. But I. Needed. My sister.”

“I’m sorry I deceived you,” Elsa said. “For all of it.” Her left hand drifted across her middle to touch her forearm in a familiar gesture. She didn’t look at Anna.

The fight seemed to have left Elsa, but Anna found that her sister’s surrender made her angrier. She wasn’t done yet. “Did Ahtohallan show you Olaf?” She demanded, and then plunged ahead without waiting for answer. “Did you see me hold him until he was nothing, and then gather the only body there would be to bury for any of my family?”

Elsa winced. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

The instinct that Anna always had to comfort Elsa when she was hurting was stirring, and that made everything worse too. She pushed it aside furiously. “You asked what I was thinking?” she said, her voice thickening against her will as she recalled the hopelessness, the gnawing nothing of despair that had climbed inside her to make its home while she was too numb to fight it. “I was thinking that it should have been you I was holding while you died, not Olaf.” Elsa bore the weight of her words silently, face turned towards the seam between the terrace and Anna’s room. “I was thinking,” Anna continued, “that if you had been willing to sacrifice yourself for this, then the next right thing was to finish it for you.” She added, breathing hard, “but nothing after that.”

Elsa’s eyes found hers again, brow creased in confusion. “There was plenty!” she said, incredulous. “Arendelle needed you. Kristoff needed you. There were so many next right things!”

“Things that you would have wanted me to do?”

“Yes!” said Elsa. “That’s why I trusted you would do them.”

“You weren’t there to tell me what you _would have done_ ,” Anna said flatly. “All I had to go on was what you _did._ ” Elsa flinched. Anna’s glare didn’t waver. “I did do what you would have wanted me to in the end,” she said. “But you had nothing to do with it.”

With the sun nearly gone below the water now, it was getting harder to make out the details of her sister’s ruined expression. But the weight of Anna’s words were clear in the way her recovered posture failed to resolve fully into her recent confidence. “You’re right,” she said, voice breaking. “I expected you to put the needs of everyone above yours when all I did was the opposite.”

Her hand glowed in the dim evening light, and a moment later a small blue globe rose slowly and burst in little bits of light that hovered gently all around them. Anna saw the lights reflecting in Elsa’s eyes as she finished. “I had no right to be upset that your first reaction was to do the same.”

The anger left Anna in a rush, and she was suddenly cold in a way that had nothing to do with Elsa’s magic. “You left me,” she said miserably. “And it took the first rock to hit the dam for me to realize I couldn’t do the same thing to everyone else, no matter how easy it would’ve been.”

She didn’t move away as Elsa stepped forward and tilted her chin up gently. “You made a queen’s decision,” she said.

Anna huffed a little and looked away, embarrassed. “You did jump into the heart of a glacier to get to the bottom of the truth that fixed everything,” she acknowledged.

“Against the fairly explicit warnings of my sister, my mother, and a very specific lullaby,” Elsa said dryly. Anna smiled reluctantly. “And I did need someone to stop me,” she added. “My sister wouldn’t have let me jump in the dark hole we’d been warned about just to confirm what I already knew.”

Anna brought her hand up to cover Elsa’s where it had moved to rest on her cheek. “I guess neither of us listened to each other in the end,” she said.

“Hmmm.” Elsa squinted in a way that was clearly intended to make Anna laugh, pretending to think hard. She succeeded. “Nope,” she said brightly, “I’m pretty sure it was just me.” She met Anna’s hug halfway and they stood still for a long moment amid the glow of the quiet blue lights.

“Anna?” Kristoff’s voice came from the room behind them, and then he appeared in the entrance to the balcony. “Oh hey Elsa,” he said. “You’re early. And…crying?”

“Just dropping in,” Elsa said warmly as both sisters opened an arm to fold him in for a group hug.

“Wmrn shtrm m dmmrf?” Anna mumbled from Elsa’s shoulder after a long moment.

There was a pause as Elsa worked it out, then: “I’d be glad to stay for dinner,” she said, smiling. “Oh hello, Olaf,” she added as he joined them.

“Hi. Elsa. Can we do the hug over again?” he asked.

All three of them laughed as they made room, and Anna picked him up so he could be in in the middle.

As they separated again, Kristoff’s brow furrowed. “Elsa, do you even have to eat?” he asked. “Being a spirit and all, is that…optional?”

“Oh!” said Olaf. “I would also like to know.” They looked at her with matching expectancy.

Anna came to the rescue, laying a hand on Kristoff’s arm. She said sagely, “down that road lie a hundred other questions you’re better off not asking.” She patted the sleeve of his robe once and, taking the hand of a giggling Elsa, they left him standing in vague concern.

After a moment of silence, Olaf looked up at Kristoff. “I don’t have to eat,” he said brightly. “I don’t have to do a lot of things humans do.”

Kristoff stared at him. "Welp," he said finally, "time for dinner." He scooped Olaf up and walked quickly to the door.

“Okay,” said Olaf cheerfully. “But I still want to know. I want to know _everything._ My food makes me feel kind of heavy in my butt and then it just goes back to normal later. Does yours not do that?”

“Oh god,” Kristoff said. Then: “You know what?” 

“What?” 

“If you keep you mouth closed while you’re moving you’ll get where you’re going faster.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” said Olaf. “Aerodynamics don’t vary a whole lot in small…” gradually, his voice faded down the stairs, and the room was quiet, lit softly by the small blue lights the evening breeze ushered through the window.


End file.
